Honey and molasses are both viscous sticky sweet fluids widely used as sweetners and in cooking. Molasses is a thick, dark to light brown viscous syrup that is separated from raw sugar in the successive processes of sugar manufacturing. This molasses can be derived from either cane or beet sugars. Typically, molasses are collected as tailings during the separation of sugars from beet and cane sugar sources.
Natural honey is a sweet sticky fluid collected by bees and deposited in a wax honeycomb cell. Typically, honey contains substantial amounts of levulose and dextrose which are invert sugars or monosaccarides. Monosaccharides can be characterized as being partially hyrolized or predigested which renders them readily assimulatable in the digestive system as opposed to the disaccharides and polysaccharides. As a result of its partially hydrolized nature, honey is a vastly superior foot product and nutrient as compared with other natural food sugars. In addition to this, honey has a substantially greater sweetening ability than other natural sugars. The sticky viscous consistency of both liquid honey and molasses is a serious problems which has caused the use of molasses and honey to be limited.
The incorporation of honey or molasses as a baking ingredient is difficult due to their viscous and sticky nature. The addition of either of these materials in liquid form causes unavoidable losses as a result of the viscous sticky material adhering to the containers. This additionally limits the practical applications available, especially in systems having high fat and oil. For example, it is difficult to use non-dried molasses in a candy bar.
Both honey and molasses have a hygroscopic nature. Both of these dried materials therefore rapidly adsorb water from atmospheric moisture. This adsorption of water from the atmosphere rapidly converts dried honey and molasses into sticky masses.
It would be advantageous to provide improved methods for drying and cooling pure honey and pure molasses to produce dried solid products. It would also be advantageous to produce dried honey and/or molasses products which are readily consumable or which may be readily used in baking, as food additives, or feed materials.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,472,450 describes a method for reducing the water content of honey by exposing a thin layer of honey to air that is heated to a temperature in the range of 40.degree. C. to 75.degree. C. This process, however, results in a honey product having an undesirably high moisture content.
There are a variety of processes presently used to form dried products from honey, molasses and other naturally found viscous sugar containing materials such as corn syrup and sorghum. One such process taught in U.S. Pat. No. 3,718,484 describes a process for dehydrating high fructose corn syrup by mixing the syrup with an ungelatinized starch to form a slurry, followed by heating, gelatinization and dehydration. Another such process is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,693,420 which describes a honey product containing honey and a gelatinized starch. A similar product is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,879,567 which describes a method of preparing a dried honey product using a gelatinized starch and non-fat dried milk.
Similar products have also been prepared using molasses. One such product is found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,985,912 which describes a solidified product prepared from molasses by a process in which wheat flour is incorporated with the molasses to form a slurry which is then dehydrated as a thin film on a heated surface.
One method for the preparation of a dry solid molasses product can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,698,911. This process is distinct from the previously named patents in that starch is not required in order to prepare the dried molasses product. In this patent, a dry solid molasses is prepared by adjusting the pH of liquid with an alkaline agent followed by drying.
Another process for forming composite food articles out of sugary syrups such as corn syrup, malt syrup, honey, molasses and sorghum can be found described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,950,551. According to this process, ungelatinized starch and/or soy protein can be mixed with the syrup to form a slurry which is then subjected in a thin film to a heated surface in order to form a thin dehydrated film which is then formed into dried or ground flakes. These dried or ground flakes are then mixed with a sufficient amount of water to form an extrudable mixture which is then extruded.
A solidified product from molasses which also contains soy protein is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 3,843,821. This process calls for dehydrating a slurry of molasses and soy protein flour by subjecting the slurry in a thin film to a heated surface.
A solid dry molasses product containing no starch and no protein additives can be prepared in accordance with the process described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,013,482. This patent describes an improved process wherein solid dried molasses is prepared by a process comprising drying and cooling and dividing the dried molasses, the improvement comprising cooling the molasses in a thin layer immediately after the drying step; the layer being sufficiently thin in relation to the cooling temperature in order to allow the molasses to be cooled to the core. The cooled molasses is then precrushed to coarse particles and reduced from the coarse particles to a powder by impact without crushing or significant friction. In this subdivided form, however, the molasses can readily adsorb more moisture, and, due to its hygroscopic nature, will thereby become sticky.
It is accordingly an object of the instant invention to provide an improved method for dried honey and/or molasses wherein the dried, hot honey and/or molasses are cooled on a cold roller thus providing a faster and drier cooling method. A further object of this invention is to provide methods for drying substantially pure honey or molasses. An additional object of the instant invention is to provide for the extrusion drying of substantially pure honey or molasses. Other objects and advantages of the instant invention will become apparent from the following description.